This past weekend was so turgid with reveal trailers I had trouble keeping track of it all. Earlier this week, we took stock of what we saw with a list of our , and now here's a list of the biggest games that weren't at Summer Game Fest.
For one reason or another, these notable games with rapidly approaching release dates ghosted Summer Game Fest, or were only mentioned briefly. In the interest of propagating my Tolkien-grade avarice for information, I've pulled together a list of the biggest no-shows to impatiently rattle my scepter at.
Fable
Playground Games has long been the Forza Horizon studio, and it's got gargantuan shoes to fill with its first foray into the world of fantasy RPGs. Despite a reveal five years ago, it still feels like we know so little about the reboot, though did assure fans the snarky tone is well intact.
Phil Spencer did mention the Fable was [[link]] on the way, but didn't say much more, so anyone hoping to learn if the fart emote will return was left hanging for yet another summer.
With its planned release next year, I do hope [[link]] we'll see what the game looks like in motion sooner rather than later. I'm more than a little excited, in part because I got a kick out of Fable 2 and in part because I was head over heels for Forza Horizon 3 through 5. Whatever Playground is cooking up, I'm itching to see it.
Perfect Dark
The other case of an Xbox Game Studios game gone missing, The Initiative's Perfect Dark, makes a little more sense. Its history of troubled development meant a lot of us were [[link]] when it actually showed up with a gameplay reveal trailer last year and looked amazing. That teaser made it look like the game had gotten a full-on immersive sim makeover, a far cry from the gentle iteration on GoldenEye 007 the N64 original was.
I went from thinking the game was quietly canceled to being hopelessly excited for it, and here we are again with radio silence. Given the game's ambitious scope, though, I'm not exactly surprised that it would skip this year after a trailer last year—and we've been treated to some in the meantime.
Everwild
I feel like a broken record at this point, but it's still worth asking: where in the world is Everwild? Rare's next game is a looker but we also know nothing about it, with only a couple trailers bubbling up ever since it was announced in 2019. say they threw it out and started again somewhere along the way, but it's still worrisome we don't even know what kind of beast it is all these years later.
I'm up for anything Rare can muster—Sea of Thieves remains one of the best co-op hangout games around—so I'll wait with bated breath for yet another year.
Blade
Superhero games keep getting canned left and right; Wonder Woman bit the dust as the whole studio behind it and EA the Black Panther game as part of its third round of layoffs this year. Details on the Blade game are light, and as PC Gamer Online Editor Fraser Brown pointed out in about this very fact, not every Marvel game rakes in the dough like Marvel Rivals. The MCU-reverent Avengers game and the excellent Midnight Suns face-planted particularly hard.
It's hard to know what the future holds for Blade, but I hope the daywalker sees the light of day eventually.
Kingdom Hearts 4
It's not explicitly confirmed that Kingdom Hearts 4 is coming to PC, but Square Enix has its efforts to bring its games to more platforms and brought the whole Kingdom Hearts backlog to PC in the last few years. It's yet another game on this list first announced right around the time the pandemic started. It did get the with some assorted screenshots earlier this year.
Listen, I love absurd melodrama and I love Donald Duck, so to have gone this long without a new Kingdom Hearts game is a real hard thing for me. Development is trucking along as far as we know, so all we can do is wait.
Marathon
Marathon's in a weird spot. Bungie at this point, and even though the upcoming shooter is apparently , it feels like a lot of people are already exhausted by the phrase "extraction shooter."
The game's absence isn't necessarily a bad omen, but it doesn't inspire confidence either, given last year's , , and release date that we're .
I'm less worried that Marathon won't be decent and more worried that it won't hit the ground running at a crucial time in Bungie's history. All we can do is wait and see.
Splinter Cell Remake
![Splinter Cell Remake: Stepping Out of the Shadows | Ubisoft [NA] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/HH1_ZCSf_HY/maxresdefault.jpg)
Everyone put on your dunce caps again. Another year, another that seems to be for the Splinter Cell remake but is actually for a , or as I call them, not-videogames. And Splinter Cell isn't just any videogame—it paved the way for stealth action in 3D, and if you ended your infiltration education after playing Thief and Metal Gear Solid, you owe it to yourself to try the original and Chaos Theory posthaste.
Or you can just wait for the remake, assuming we ever see it. It was announced four years ago now, and since then we've gotten squat. Well, that's not true; I guess the director did a year into development.
Beyond Good & Evil 2
![Beyond Good and Evil 2: New Gameplay Update - Augments, Vehicles, Co-Op, and Spyglass | Ubisoft [NA] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Y2229DmJLIY/maxresdefault.jpg)
I've convinced myself this game was canned about 29 times, but thankfully was there to correct me . The cult classic action-adventure finally got a remaster last year, but its hotly anticipated sequel is with each passing sunrise as its development time in days traces the full range of quadruple-digit numbers.
I don't even know what to expect from this game anymore. It was announced the year Call of Duty: World at War came out. Now we're on Black Ops 7. It stole the title for longest dev time from , and that game felt less like the culmination of all that work and more like a Big Mac that had been reheated so many times it started glowing.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Just kidding! You actually did get your requisite 5 seconds of gameplay, Silksong truther, in the ROG Xbox Ally announcement. I don't want to hear any complaining, especially as it's slated to release as a launch title for the new handheld.
Seriously though, it's been forever since this thing was announced and we've still only seen the briefest of snippets. For all my Hollow Knight lovers out there, I pray Silksong is somehow as good as you deserve for all these patient years.